The Best of Health – Details, episodes & analysis

The finale of Season 4 with special guest Dr Fiona McCulloch ND features an in depth conversation around PCOS and diagnosis - this is a must-listen for all nutritionists and functional medicine practitioners!

As a woman with PCOS Fiona is passionate about health education and advocacy for women with PCOS, and serves on the medical advisory committee of the PCOS Awareness Association and as an expert on IVF.ca. She is also a medical advisor to Open Source Health and frequently lectures to professionals at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine.

Fiona gives us a unique insight to the PCOS updated diagnostic criteria and practice guidelines as well as her own experience of supporting diagnosis with adolescents and adults.

This week my guest is the impressive Henrietta Norton: nutritional therapist, author of the best selling book: Take Control of Your Endometriosis, founder of visionary food supplement brand - Wild Nutrition, and I’m very lucky to not only count Hen as a colleague but also a friend. 

I couldn’t invite Hen back on the podcast without asking her to share more about her Food-Grown® supplements - which have revolutionised the supplement industry for the better…. We discuss the groundbreaking Perimenopause Report that Hen wrote to change the way our daughters experience perimenopause and this theme continues  throughout the episode discussing perimenopause symptoms and support, the challenges of managing perimenopause as a woman, the importance of education, the art of listening to our bodies, the value of rest in regulating our nervous system.

There are so many wonderful golden nuggets within this podcast episode and Hen is a dream to talk with and so inspiring to listen to.

First up in this season I welcome back my fabulous colleague Dr Nicky Keay to talk about the demystifying education around the menstrual cycle, specifically in the age group of teens and young women.

We both share such a passion about improving education with this age group about the menstrual cycle. We touch upon everything from the changing age of menarche, the health benefits of the menstrual cycle, peak bone mass, the impact of the oral contraception pill and how nutrition impacts our hormones.

Nicky has a captivating way of talking about women’s hormones - grab a cuppa and tune in via wherever you listen to your podcasts [search The Best of Health] and I also highly recommend Nicky’s book “Hormones, Health and Human Potential” if you want to delve deeper into the topic.

My last podcast episode of season 3 is the incredible Lara Briden - it was like Christmas come early spending an hour speaking with her and I’m so grateful for her time.

If you’ve not discovered Lara before, this is an incredible introduction to her natural ease of explaining perimenopause, menopause, HRT, metabolic flexibility, insulin resistance and so much more. But overall she gives the gift of hope - for all women going through perimenopause, there is so much you can do to overcome symptoms and to excel as you enter menopause and the next stage of life.

One of the many inspiring speakers at the Integrative and Personalised Medicine conference this year was Patrick Holden, Founding Director and Chief Executive of the Sustainable Food Trust. Patrick’s session really resonated with me as he shared his passion about the application of Nature’s principles of Harmony to food and farming.

I am thrilled that Patrick agreed to join me in a podcast this season to discuss why our food system is in desperate need of reform.

With nearly 50 years of farming experience, Holden Farm Dairy is now the longest established organic dairy farm in West Wales. As well as being hands-on at the farm, his role at the Sustainable Food Trust works towards accelerating the transition towards more sustainable food systems and influencing government policy - he only recently returned from COP27.

I’m so grateful to Patrick for his time to talk about how sustainable food systems directly impact our health - there's plenty that we can all learn and do to support sustainability.

This week’s podcast has been a long time in the planning so I am absolutely delighted to finally share with you my podcast episode with Dr Toral Shah.

We discuss how interactions between genes & environment impact both the risk of developing cancer and the intersection with social determinants of health. Toral talks about her own family’s personal cancer experience frankly, to help educate people about epigenetics and cancer. She also shares how stress is a major risk factor and we touch upon how personalising nutrition and lifestyle advice can be a huge support to your body to reduce the risk of cancer but also through perimenopause.

This week on the podcast I was delighted to speak to Dr Victoria Sampson, a dentist and scientist (shortlisted as one of the most promising young scientists in Europe for Forbes under 30💥) to talk about the second most diverse microbiome in our body that been largely ignored - the oral microbiome.

Victoria helps shed a light on this wonderful microbiome and is really fascinating with you consider that the teeth are the only non-shedding surface in the body, so it’s a really unique environment when you also consider the amount of things that are now in our mouths beyond food and drink - like braces, invisaline, fillings, crowns.

The mouth is the gateway to gastro-intestinal tract, so if there is an imbalance in the oral microbiome there are systemic body-wide implications. We discuss everything around the oral microbiome including implications of an oral microbiome imbalance on men and women’s fertility, to the topic of fluoride and also the importance of brushing and flossing!

As always, I could have chatted and listened to Victoria all day - this episode is packed full of gems for anyone interested in their optimal health.

This podcast episode was a huge eye-opener for me and features Dr Emma Ping, an accredited registered member of The British Menopause Society who is passionate about offering women holistic, patient-centred, bespoke advice and support and another passionate believer that it’s never too late start improving your life.

Dr Ping reached out to me to generously share her specialist knowledge in ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) and her particular interest in women and how hormones influence ADHD symptoms.

I found this episode a huge education and a really fascinating guided expert insight into women’s health, the neurodivergent brain, and the connection between female hormones and ADHD.

Find out more about Dr Ping and Menopause Care Clinic here: https://menopausecare.co.uk/dipl-team-member/associate-dr-emma-ping/ 

This week’s podcast episode features immunologist Jenna Macciochi and we delve in exploring the part our immune system plays in ageing well.

The Immune System is a part of the body that we have all become acute more aware of in the last 2 years so I was thrilled to get Jenna on the podcast as the queen of the immune system to explain the many different facets to this beautiful system and how environmental factors like stress impact it as well as her thoughts on supporting immune functionality.

It was such a wonderful conversation, we discussed as working mothers ourselves the personal experience we both have encountered with the natural changes to our hormone levels on immune system and wider health as a whole!

It’s a fabulous episode for anyone with an interest in looking after your immune health through all life stages.

If you’ve been listening to my podcast since season one then today’s guest will be a familiar voice… I had the joy of spending an hour with my wonderful friend and professional colleague Emma Beswick from @LifeCodeGx

Emma and I discuss metabolism and how nutrigenomics profiling can give a truly unique insight to how you generate and use energy, as it relates to weight loss and weight management, energy for optional brain health, and summarise the involvement and usefulness of sirtuins in anti-ageing interventions….. It’s fascinating folks ….. The next frontier of  truly understanding and navigating YOUR metabolism as we age is here!